Deep Cut Guide

Beyond Authority

10 routes · granite (Pikes Peak Granite) · 9,299 ft

Help locate these routes: survey the wall

What's here

5.5 to 5.11, but over half of these routes are 5.10.

  1. 1 5.5
  2. 1 5.7
  3. 1 5.8
  4. 1 5.9
  5. 5 5.10
  6. 1 5.11

Counted from the 10 climbs here that carry a grade. Shown only where there are at least 5 of them — below that the shape is noise.

How well located

Position on wall known 10 

No route here has its own point yet. The map pin is the crag. At the wall? Survey it: 30 seconds per route.

The order of the climbs along this wall is known from the open catalogue, so a few surveys go a long way: standing at Loose Block Croc, Fundalina Fox, What's That Mean? (2 climbs, about 60 seconds) would place up to 8 more climbs between them. Survey the wall →

“Up to” because the estimate between two surveyed routes is only used when they turn out to be close enough together on the ground.

Rock, from the geologic map

Fine-grained porphyritic phase. Mesoproterozoic, about 1,600 to 1,000 million years old.

Pink, fine- to medium-grained, massive porphyritic biotite granite with phenocrysts of spheroidal gray quartz, subhedral microcline, and oligoclase

This is the map unit under this crag's map point, read from the 1:100,000 sheet (Kellogg and others, 2008, USGS Geologic Investigations Series 3000). The point can be a few hundred metres from the rock, a cliff often stands on the line between two units, and at that scale a line on the map is about 100 m wide on the ground, so the wall itself may be the neighbouring unit. The rock named at the top of this page comes from the public geology of this area; this card is the map's answer. Every crag on this unit: Fine-grained porphyritic phase. Geology data: Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0), serving USGS and Colorado Geological Survey maps.

On the map since 1899

The USGS has mapped this ground since 1899. 19 historical sheets cover this crag's map point; the oldest is below.

Thumbnail of the 1899 USGS sheet covering Beyond Authority
USGS 1:125000-scale Quadrangle for West Denver, CO 1899 · U.S. Geological Survey · 1899 · 1:125,000 sheet
USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection · Public domain · the record · placed by its coordinates
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Public domain, U.S. Geological Survey. The sheet shows the ground as the survey found it then, which is why a trail or road you know may be missing. Every sheet over this point, 1899 to 1983: USGS topoView.

In print since 1877

Free to read: public domain or government work. About South Platte as a whole, not this wall. More in the reading room.

From the archives

Photographs of this area held by the Library of Congress, oldest first. Every one carries the Library's own "no known restrictions on publication"; anything else is left out.

Platte Canon, Colorado · Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942 · 1899 · photochrom
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · indexed to this place by the archive
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Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Threshing wheat near Sedgwick, Colo., South Platte Valley on Union Pacific · Stimson, Joseph Elam, 1870-1952 · 1900
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division · Public domain · the record · found by place name, not yet checked
Report this item

Hidden as soon as you tell us, everywhere it appears, before anyone reviews it.

Routes

Also within 3 km

Straight line between the two crags' map points, each of which can be some way from its rock. For when this wall is full, or the sun has found it.

Photos from climbers

No photos here yet. If you're at the crag, yours would be the first.

Pick a photo from your camera roll rather than taking one here: a picture taken inside a browser usually has no location saved in it, and we check that the photo was taken at this crag before publishing it. Photos of guidebook pages and topos are refused — they're the author's work. By sending one you're letting us publish it.

Nobody reviews these before they appear, so anyone can report one and it's hidden straight away — including you, if you change your mind, and including a photographer who finds their own picture here.

Taken at the crag by climbers and published as they sent them. Each one's own location had to be within 0.5 km of this crag before we accepted it. See something that shouldn't be here? Use Report this photo under it and it's hidden at once. Anything else, write to us.

Sun today
sun 09:40-16:20
Wall faces SW (USGS elevation). Shade from the surrounding terrain is counted.
Partly enclosed: the skyline averages 14° above horizontal.
Rain & forecast
No recent weather for this crag.

Conditions reported

Nothing reported recently.

Report what you see

Reports are dated and fade on their own: wet rock after 3 days, a bad bolt after a year. No names, no text.

Access & safety

Emergency: call 911. Read out your location: Works without signal. If GPS fails, this crag's approximate map point is 39.52441 N, 105.41653 W (Beyond Authority). That point can be off by hundreds of metres, so say so.

The map point for this crag is on land managed by Pike National Forest (federal). It lies inside national forest.

The boundary is close. Land managed by Colorado Parks & Wildlife or Colorado State Parks comes within 250 m of this point, and the point is not the rock — the wall itself may be on the other side of the line. Check which before you rely on either one's rules.

Land manager from USGS PAD-US (public domain), read 2026-09-29. It is the manager of the crag's map point, which can be a long way from the wall. What you may do on the rock is the manager's to say, not ours.

Rules for all Pike-San Isabel National Forests land

Fees
No entrance fee for the Pike-San Isabel National Forests or the Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands. Fees apply at campgrounds and day-use areas operated by the forest's concessionaire, paid on site.
Overnight
On the Leadville, Salida and San Carlos districts of the San Isabel, camping at any location within the same 20-mile radius for more than 14 days in a continuous 30-day period is prohibited. No camping within 100 feet of water outside a developed or designated site.

Read on Pike-San Isabel National Forests's own pages, checked 2026-09-29 by John Crawford. What they require, in full, or their own climbing page. These apply to the manager's whole holding; anything specific to this crag is above.

Nearby, from OpenStreetMap

Toilets
450 m away (map)
Campsite
Ponderosa Loop, 4,023 m away (map)

Distances are a straight line from this crag's map point, which can itself be hundreds of metres off; a road may be much longer. Mapped by OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), so a toilet missing here may simply be unmapped. Parking here is what OSM has drawn nearby, not a guidebook's directions.

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